Smithology: Easy Come, Uneasy Go

When it's time, it's time. But you don't have to like it.

People get attached to cars, right? Everyone knows someone. The uncle who went to the grave in his Caprice, maybe, or the cousin who really loves his Shelby Rampage and also probably eats paint chips at night while watching The Hills because seriously, Shelby Rampage.

In 32 years on this earth, I've owned something like 30 vehicles. It's no stretch to say that I don't own most of them now. (Garage: Caterham Seven. Half stake in a Renault Le Car, which is only half as dumb as a full stake. A BMW 1800ti shell that I share with a friend in Chicago. A Hot Wheels Tyrrell. A sign on the wall that says Stop Buying Half-Shares in Cars, You Big Jerk. Etc.)

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One of the secrets to owning a lot of stuff without having mind-boggling wealth is selling a lot of stuff. If you are a person of limited means and want to try a variety of cars, you have to embrace turnover. In retrospect, most of it was easy. You inevitably get a little misty watching the car leave your driveway, but a week or two later, you're good.

Except when you're not.

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I just sold a 1989 BMW M3—the first-generation model with the fat fenders, 7200-rpm four, and big wing. White on black, 68,000 miles, needed nothing. I owned it for five years and barely drove it, covering something like 5000 miles. I bought it to replace another late-Eighties M3, which was itself bought to replace another late-Eighties M3.

Oh, man. That last car: That was the one. I tell myself everyone has a story like this. When I was 14, I bought a clapped-out 1957 MGA and spent the next three years restoring it with my dad. My daily driver during that process was a '76 BMW 2002, this goofy orange thing with twin Webers and a God-given bent for leaving every corner or parking lot sideways. One summer during college, I sold both the 2002 and the MG in an attempt to pare down, then used some of the proceeds to buy that first M3. It was the newest car I'd ever had, and the only wheeled thing I owned when I returned to school in St. Louis in the fall.

Countless aphorisms suggest that if you do things like "work hard" or "find your passion," the rest of your life will fall into place. No one tells you that if you do none of these things, your life will fall into place anyway. When I bought that M3, I liked it, but I had no clue it would come to mean so much to me. I parked it on the street in a bombed-out neighborhood in St. Louis—a guy was once knifed on our front lawn—and put thousands of miles on it through road trips and track days. I worked on it in the alley, tools in the gutter. The back seat occasionally saw girls, some of whom actually liked the massive bolsters. (Not a euphemism.) The car did everything I ever asked of it, and I didn't have to give it much in return. I'd sit on the porch in summer, crack a beer, and stare at it, happy in that college way, unaware of how good I really had it.

I sold that car because I grew to loathe the color—a musty metallic black called diamantschwarz, which my friend Ben Thongsai nicknamed diamantbarf because it aged like a moldy sock. But that was a coat of paint, not the whole machine. Runs to the store felt like full-tilt qualifiers. Wet highways made you want to dive-bomb people on off-ramps. And above everything, that magic steering, those simple controls, the chassis that let you get away with anything. Somehow, a handful of changes had turned an unremarkable car—the 104-hp Eighties 318i, which essentially shares the M3's engine block—into a giant.

And now I've let it go.

Well, not that exact car. That went shortly after graduation, the money dumped into another M3 of a different color. And that car eventually went too, because my dad was nice enough to sell me his near-perfect, white-on-black '89, and I needed a way to pay for it. (Lost yet?)

Early M3s are now worth decent cash, but a decade ago, they were cheaper than a new Kia, and only a small group of loonies seemed interested. (Not enough grunt, people said. Needs a six, they said. Dopes.) These days, thanks partly to the Internet, almost everyone sees them in the right light. It's enough to make a guy want to keep one around, even if it's just used to replay memories.

Still, I realized a few years back that the white car was sitting too much. I wanted to drive it but somehow never found the time; I wanted to sell it but always stopped short of pulling the trigger. Maybe I just couldn't bear to lose what it meant. You get older, you can't always work on your track car in the street and drive it every day and not give a rip about anything. Even if you want to.

Which brings us to this: Last weekend, I drove to Wisconsin and bought a 1966 Ford Mustang, a fastback with side pipes and Le Mans stripes and fat Avons. It looks like a freaking Trans-Am car, and I've wanted one since I was eight. My wife is pregnant with our first child, and I long ago decided that no kid of mine will grow up without a window-rattling V-8 in the house. One day, I'll climb into that Ford and drive my son or daughter to the store all flying-lap, or maybe just dive into an off-ramp like a bat out of hell. And if we're lucky, the whole process will start over.

Sam Smith is R&T's executive editor. He can get you a good deal on half a Renault Le Car.